Bargaining Update – Central Negotiations

On Monday, July 27th, we filed for conciliation with the Ministry of Labour – you may have seen the news stories about this. Through this process, the Ministry appoints a “conciliator.” Because the management team only offered two days in July, and has committed to only an additional two days in August and two days in September, we felt we needed to move the process along by filing for conciliation. We know that you’re not prepared to go another year without a contract.

(Some of you have asked about the bargaining process and how a strike/lockout deadline gets established. We first must be in conciliation before we can take steps to set a strike deadline. We set a strike deadline by requesting what is called a “no-board report”. The Ministry sets the strike deadline for 17 days after it issues the no- board. We’ve asked locals to prepare for the possibility of job action in September).